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Late last year, I saw a Facebook post announcing that the Occupy Wall Street folks were working on a cookbook. I shot them an email, asking if they needed an editor and a publisher. It turned out they were in the market for both.

A year ago, I accidentally started a publishing company, focusing on quirky, political books about food. I have yet to publish a book other than my own, but it’ll happen. In the meantime, I’ve been learning about editing and ghostwriting, and I’ve been exploring possibilities.
Although I’m undoubtedly a member of the ninety-nine percent, I never camped out or showed up at a demonstration. I own a small business—a farmers’ market concession—and from time to time I donated surplus food to my local Occupy Kitchen. I also donated an outdoor stove. You could say I’m a sympathetic outsider.

The Occupy Cookbook project was in its infancy when I tried to get involved. I spoke with the guy who’d spearheaded the endeavor, and he said he wanted to publish recipes by the ninety nine percent, for the ninety nine percent, focusing on making the most of inexpensive ingredients during hard times. The introduction would include essays about food politics, as well as an account of the early, heady days at the Zuccotti Park Occupy Kitchen, complete with photographs. ...

Worth reading all of it just to get to the end:

...We all deserve to be fed but, in order for this to happen, someone has to be enlisted to feed us. ...

I was hesitant to broach the subject of money. At first he said that he didn’t want anyone profiting from the project

That's nice, the guy is living up to his creed. He is railing against profits that corporations make so he doesn't want to be a hypocrite and make a profit off the cookbook. Good for him. (wait for it)...

then he conceded that he really would like to earn a bit of money because he was doing most of the work and still had to pay his own rent.

And there it is!!!

Can you imagine? He wanted to make some money because he was doing the work <shock> and he had to pay for the roof over his head. Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, it's called capitalism.

More:

The tales that I heard from Occupy Kitchens involved bounty and scarcity, sharing and hoarding.

I guess we are still on the lookout for Utopia. sigh.

But there were inevitable issues around sharing food, and overworked cooks sometimes found themselves feeling resentful of the exhausting task they had taken on.

Sounds like the cooks should occupy Occupy. It appears they are the 99% in Occupy and the eaters are the 1%.

At least they are learning some survival skills, by learning to cook outdoors and all.

Maybe they can put these new skills to work-there's a guy in Detroit who does a BBQ for the homeless of the Cass Corridor (Detroit's worst skid row) every Sunday. He welcomes anyone who wants to bring food down to join in.

But he does the BBQs in Jesus' name, so they probably wouldn't want to help out. Not only that, the only difference between OWS and regular homeless people is the tents.